There is no reason to play evil on surface anymore

[Aodh Lazuli]

I'd like to reiterate that nobody in this thread indicated that they believed anything to the contrary of this. This prevailing assumption that what people are complaining about is Good characters not tolerating Evil actions is so very confusing to me. This isn't what the thread is about, as so many other posts have already outlined.

But this entire thread's premise is suggesting that having an evil character and displaying "evil behaviours" is impossible or pointless due to the immediate and crushing response of good aligned characters.

It's weird that this has been turned around to be a thread about spaces when in its inception is was about spaces for specific behaviour.

What behaviours are evil characters prevented from displaying, if not the visual and aesthetic markers of "evilness"?

(a few minor edits for clarity)

[Basementfellow]

But this entire thread's premise is suggesting that having an evil character and displaying "evil behaviours" is impossible or pointless due to the immediate and crushing response of good aligned characters.

It's weird that this has been turned around to be a thread about spaces when in its inception is was about behaviour.

What are evil characters prevented from doing, if not displaying the visual and aesthetic effects of "evilness"?

There's an enormous difference between roaming into town with a lemure in tow expecting nothing to befall you, and attempting to play an Evil aligned character yet being stonewalled at every turn. I've noticed an undertone running through certain posts in which people assume said Evil aligned characters are only caught, and therefor rightfully shunted out of settlements and refused interaction because they lacked the necessary tact or depth to be taken seriously.

The conversation naturally diverged to include settlements (what I assume you mean when you say spaces, please correct me if I'm wrong) because of this problem -- evil characters are prevented from entering almost every surface settlement upon leaders receiving the mere notion that there might be evil afoot. It's tangentially related to the original premise of this thread -- that certain relatively widespread behaviors among the playerbase tend to quash perceived villainy before it can ever even begin, making for rather anticlimactic and dramatically dissatisfying situations.

[Petrifictus]

There is some truth that evil has trouble to grow roots into the surface.

I've met good PCs who feel the presence of evil PC as a threat to their comfort lvl and want to get rid of it before it might become a threat, even if the character has not done any scum and villainy yet.

Some take it as certainty that if the evil character is not driven away, it will surely come bite back them later so better be safe than sorry. Which has unfortunately gone into use of metagaming tools like Detect Evil or Myon portal. If you're caught being a naughty kid, you better get lost or the nice kids will do it a hard way.

It would be also good to remember that not all the evil characters practice plotting to take over the settlements or baby eating.
Like you might have Lawful Evil Halfling Hawk'in who just is willing to get his hands more dirty for the good of the Bendir Dale.
One reason why I like the Cordor these days is because of it feeling more open minded.

I would understand the good guys not tolerating the bad guy who is caught summoning undead, poisoning wells, walking in the open with slaves, etc. Ignoring these evils would be really confusing from the good side.

But please purge the evil for the deeds of scum and villainy, not for having evil alignment.

[Aodh Lazuli]

There's an enormous difference between roaming into town with a lemure in tow expecting nothing to befall you, and attempting to play an Evil aligned character yet being stonewalled at every turn. I've noticed an undertone running through certain posts in which people assume said Evil aligned characters are only caught, and therefor rightfully shunted out of settlements and refused interaction because they lacked the necessary tact or depth to be taken seriously.

The section I have underlined in your post isn't quite the argument I would make.

Instead, I would say that in many cases (but notably not all), there is an overreliance on the visual aesthetics and bold outward excess of violence or depravity to project "evilness", that quite understandably meets a reaction (which it appears to invite) from good aligned characters.

That is quite a different statement from "evil characters get caught and shouldn't complain when they do", or "obvious evil should not be taken seriously, players in black and spikes are doing evil wrong."... Both of those statements would be wildly offensive, dismissive and needlessly hostile, in the face of what is an aesthetic choice. We make the fiction we wanna make, right?

But the fact remains that when we play evil characters (or for that matter good characters, or neutral characters), we have to give some thought to the behaviours we exhibit, and make a prediction about how that behaviour will be responded to by the characters with whom we interact, then pick and choose what is most likely to carry an engaging narrative forward.

The conversation naturally diverged to include settlements (what I assume you mean when you say spaces, please correct me if I'm wrong) because of this problem -- evil characters are prevented from entering almost every surface settlement upon leaders receiving the mere notion that there might be evil afoot. It's tangentially related to the original premise of this thread -- that certain relatively widespread behaviors among the playerbase tend to quash perceived villainy before it can ever even begin, making for rather anticlimactic and dramatically dissatisfying situations.

From experience, I have found this to be untrue. Firstly, if this were the case, settlement leaders would be far in excess of their exile quotas for settlement population. It is simply not possible to exile or bar entry to any and all evil the moment the leadership have the slightest suspicion it exists.

I find it remarkable how quickly people forget Cordor having an evil chancellor, Guldorand having a more or less openly evil teifling as a prominent and influential figure in governance, Bendir's government welcoming and support of an outwardly awful "trading consortium", the Cordorian priests of Umberlee... And so on.


I do agree that another non-racial surface settlement is needed in order to give room for a wider array of in-character ethics to take root on the surface. Really I do, but this thread is conflating that quite genuine issue with some vague and unevidenced notion about how good aligned characters are being too hasty on the old hostile button, or slamming down a detect evil and exile. Those issues, if they exist, are bound to be centred around the behaviour and (mis)conduct of specific players. As such they are something for the DM team to manage and monitor, rather than the subject of a public whinge on the matter.

[Nobs]

Am i the only one having fun on his evil and CN toons?

I know for a fact that a few of the people that I joined with recently very quickly abandoned their evil characters because they felt that the community in general was rabidly and violently meta-gaming any slight hint of evil-ness.
But I'm sure somebody is having fun

And why did they feel that way?
What where they rping?
And how where they rping their own toon?

[Durvayas]

The conversation naturally diverged to include settlements (what I assume you mean when you say spaces, please correct me if I'm wrong) because of this problem -- evil characters are prevented from entering almost every surface settlement upon leaders receiving the mere notion that there might be evil afoot. It's tangentially related to the original premise of this thread -- that certain relatively widespread behaviors among the playerbase tend to quash perceived villainy before it can ever even begin, making for rather anticlimactic and dramatically dissatisfying situations.

From experience, I have found this to be untrue. Firstly, if this were the case, settlement leaders would be far in excess of their exile quotas for settlement population. It is simply not possible to exile or bar entry to any and all evil the moment the leadership have the slightest suspicion it exists.

This is a poor arguement at best.

You know full well hitting the hostile button and attacking someone, and informing someone they will be attacked any time they set foot in town, is entirely as effective as a mechanical exile script, especially at lower levels, when most evil PCs are outed and stomped out. If anything, I'd say that exiles becoming de-incentivized to use(expensive to maintain, there are fewer of them available, etc) has only encouraged exile by PvP more now than in the past.

[Nekonecro]

I actually prefer that, you can respond to PvP, less so with mechanical exiles.

[Durvayas]

I actually prefer that, you can respond to PvP, less so with mechanical exiles.

I'm not saying that its better, I'm saying people seem more quick to violence than they used to be. There has been a culture shift made worse by a design change eliminating the only real viable refuge for pariahs on the surface that aren't pirates.

[Aodh Lazuli]

This is a poor arguement at best.

You know full well hitting the hostile button and attacking someone, and informing someone they will be attacked any time they set foot in town, is entirely as effective as a mechanical exile script, especially at lower levels, when most evil PCs are outed and stomped out. If anything, I'd say that exiles becoming de-incentivized to use(expensive to maintain, there are fewer of them available, etc) has only encouraged exile by PvP more now than in the past.

I would contest that your argument is poor at best and neglects the fact that neither players nor characters are omniscient. Exile scripts, however, are omniscient (bar good disguise checks, which coincidentally work just as well against players).

Further, I addressed poor player conduct and players being ill-mannered and ungenerous (which is what you are describing as the problem) later in the same post as the section you quoted and responded to. This appears to be something you overlooked. However, to restate, if players are being unreasonable ungenerous shits, that is a matter for the DMs to address following players submitting evidenced reports that give specifics of the situation and an analysis of the broader context, rather than unevidenced public whinging...

Nor should poor player conduct be conflated with and treated as the same issue as the lack of another non-racial surface settlement (which would allow for a wider range of IC ethics and morals to find a home). Players being douchebags is an issue entirely separate from that discussion.

[Sartain]

Am i the only one having fun on his evil and CN toons?

I know for a fact that a few of the people that I joined with recently very quickly abandoned their evil characters because they felt that the community in general was rabidly and violently meta-gaming any slight hint of evil-ness.
But I'm sure somebody is having fun

And why did they feel that way?
What where they rping?
And how where they rping their own toon?

I wouldn't know since I wasn't there, I just heard the complaints. They all strike me as competent role players though and one of them used to be RPR 40(and has recently returned, didn't lose rating due to poor RP but to absence, as I understand it), so I doubt they were being too retarded

[Cerk Evermoore]

Even just like some more obscure grinding places would be a really big quality of life improvement.

Out at sea could benefit with a couple more actual dungeons.

I think there is space in sibayad for 1-2 more dungeons also.

More space means more options for places to level. Especially if those places are hard for regular people to access.

A lot of players would be okay with travelling a little further or solving a weird puzzle if it meant theyd be less likely to run into conflict.

Surface baddies isnt an easy ride but i feel it makes things dangerous and fun. More leveling spots seems like a great quality of life improvement. That way everyone can enjoy it, and it creates less conflict over two groups wanting the same leveling spot. (which imo is more of an ooc based conflict.)

[Baseili]

There are plenty of reasons to play evil on the surface, it is the outcome of playing said part that becomes the issue and that stems from a single fact, Arelith is not an RP server but an action-RP server.

Its why people complain bitterly against theft or pickpocketing despite being a common thing in cities since their inception but won't bat an eye if they see a weaponmaster or better yet a barbarian using a dozen magic wands, a mage/cleric chugging coffee like a dying man in the desert or an elf, whose people are typically chaotic in nature, who happens to be a monk with a longbow. Then theres my personal favourite, people turning into or summoning dragons with onlookers acting as if they had simply put on a hat or whistled for a dog.
These absurdities are accepted because the world is absurd, people are quite literally facing off against liches, dragons and all manner of fantastic horrors on a daily basis. So when an evil character pops up people do what they are taught by the server to do, destroy them until they go away, because neutral and good are the only things represented within the settlements and after all "What You See Is What You Get."

Now unfortunately a thug can't slip back into the slums of Cordor because they doesn't exist, theres no underbelly in Brog for a warlock to gather followers, no seedy tavern for the highwayman to count their coin or ruined estate for the power-mad mage to brood. No, they are eventually brushed off to somewhere more accepting of evil regardless if the characters concept survives or worse still, if their builds reflect their character rather than being "optimal" and they are dismissed as a threat after two pummellings.
On the other hand if the evil character is built optimally, is well equiped enough that it takes three people to bring down, has a pocket full of friends and dresses like Sauron you will have an absolute blast.

[-XXX-]

Eh, I feel like playing openly evil characters on the surface is straihght-up unviable, leaving subtle evil characters as the next logical option.
On the other hand, subtle evilness is a finite business, since it's only a matter of time before such characters are exposed.
So, what to do with openly evil characters (or those who have been exposed)?
They have no place on the surface, so should they all move to Andunor? (that notion feels awkward)
Should they all undergo a "redemption story arc"? (that idea feels simply stupid)
Should they be rolled?

This brings me to another point, which is "the game". Arelith is full of really badass characters and some of them happen to be bad guys, but only rarely you see any of them fulfill the role of the "big bad". Rather than that the majority of them are more often a target of IC ridicule.
Why's that? Because the "only game that matters" is played on the settlement system level and most of the openly bad guys have sort of disqualified themselves from it from the get-go (by being openly the bad guys, d'oh).

People also often complain about PvP (which the aforementioned esteemed representatives of the almost comic book level of badassdom usually excel at), but as a narrative tool, PvP's become utterly useless and anti-climactic, because no matter how it goes, the "good guy" wins!

PvP takes place, bad guy loses, gets exposed
or
PvP takes place, good guy loses, respawns, exposes bad guy (usually throws in some cheesy angle about a great personal sacrifice and grave suffering to expose great evil...)

[Alox]

Reintroduce an NPC in the underdark that makes you into an outcast. Fairly simple way to make an evil char get a new home.

At the same time, remove the level 1 outcast thing, make it a transition that happens at some point in the character's life.

[Ebonstar]

Reintroduce an NPC in the underdark that makes you into an outcast. Fairly simple way to make an evil char get a new home.

At the same time, remove the level 1 outcast thing, make it a transition that happens at some point in the character's life.

too many outcasts below as it is, that imo do not portray as outcasts at all. So this would be a very bad idea save for making it a token like assassin with a DM interview

Years ago one of the deadliest assassins was a human outcast, noone crossed her everyone hired her, and she would take down marks above and below. This was before the its cool to be an outcast thing came about.

Outcast status should have more reason behind it than I want to be a human who lives in the Underdark. But again this is just my personal opinion

[Alox]

Reintroduce an NPC in the underdark that makes you into an outcast. Fairly simple way to make an evil char get a new home.

At the same time, remove the level 1 outcast thing, make it a transition that happens at some point in the character's life.

too many outcasts below as it is, that imo do not portray as outcasts at all. So this would be a very bad idea save for making it a token like assassin with a DM interview

Years ago one of the deadliest assassins was a human outcast, noone crossed her everyone hired her, and she would take down marks above and below. This was before the its cool to be an outcast thing came about.

Outcast status should have more reason behind it than I want to be a human who lives in the Underdark. But again this is just my personal opinion

I don't really think the number of outcasts would significantly rise, if outcast status moved from something you roll as level 1 to something you have to gain later on.

[-XXX-]

I don't feel like all exposed villains should belong to Andunor. Characters living in the Underdark should be in the Underdark because they are Underdarkers and not because they ended up there when all other surface towns closed the gates for them virtually overnight as a result of IG events, and have nowhere else to go.

I think that the mechanical designation "outcast" is a little misleading here too. Unless failed villains are supposed to get shipped into Andunor by design, which I don't think was the DEV team's intention... unless I'm mistaken and one of them corrects me here ofc.

[Sea Shanties]

*caution, attitude.*

In the similar discussion thread regarding Monster-Characters living in settlements, etc... I think it applies very much to Warlocks and evil classes with dark, unnatural, demonic summons.

Keep in mind that even though you don't 'SEE' commoners around the settlements like Cordor, Guldorand, etc... but we as players should assume they are there. Look at the Cordor Farmlands, for example. There are no NPC's out there ACTUALLY tilling those fields.. it's assumed that there are more farmers out there doing their farm-thing. There are commoners all over the settlement areas. There is a caravan system that shuttles Commoners between settlements that we don't see.

...

And if you want to grouse about the dificulty of leveling without your demonic pets... roll up a dedicated archer and see how difficult solo - leveling is now, and you'll grow a finer appreciation for the ease of your chosen evility. (new word!)

Nothing I said contradicts this (or deserved to be scolded about attitude.)

The status quo of hiding evil in Cordor etc could and should be maintained, but for the simple sake of making the game a little more fun for the evil path a more evil-oriented writ system could exist in a lawless/shady surface place so the evil types could network there. These two things aren't exclusive, and I'm not complaining about not being able to tote undead in Cordor, that's silly. But at the same time choosing to be the bad guy outside the underdark shouldn't be a punishment, it should be encouraged to make sure all possible roles are being played. We want bad guys to level as quickly as good guys and form just as large networks and have some victories some times and to do so they need some freedom to build up their strength and resources.

"Fun" does matter, this is a game and that is pretty much the whole point of being here. Playing a warlock or necromancer or assassin who has to hide it can be very fun, but not every time. The more options you have to take very different paths on very different characters the better the server is.

[The Kriv]

What I am reading is: "Good alignment Characters are outing my evil alignment character, preventing me from continuing RP'ing my character as openly evil, thus making it unfun for me, and not worth investing time into any longer."

Some have written that the process of the outing is -sometimes- through unfair/metagaming methods, which is naturally unfair, but that the original authors are stating that the Good Aligned characters are constantly witch-hunting the evil ones and that once they are sufficiently outed as 'evil' , they can no longer play their character concept.

I've read there is great disappointment in that the use of mechanical/traditional evil abilities of their character... abilities which probably drew them to that class/build to begin with... can't be used as openly as they wish (case in point: being openly warlock in popular grind spots) because it further 'outs' them essentially destroying, or making it so difficult to continue that they just don't play evil as a result.


D&D being a heroic game, and Arelith being a strict RP Only server naturally clashes hero archetype character concepts with shadow archetype character concepts (Note: The use of the term "shadow here is from the Jung / Joseph Campell models, and not from the similarly named character ability)


it's been pointed out that myself (and others) keep bring back the topic that evil characters are getting stomped by good characters once the evil'ness is uncovered.

choosing to be the bad guy outside the underdark shouldn't be a punishment, it should be encouraged to make sure all possible roles are being played. We want bad guys to level as quickly as good guys and form just as large networks and have some victories some times and to do so they need some freedom to build up their strength and resources.

Is the above quote reversable? should choosing to play a GOOD GUY... INSIDE... the underdark not be a punshiment ALSO?

Should we open up the Undardark to allow GOOD characters to move about freely and not get rolf-stomped by the forces of Andunor JUST for being in Andunor? Should GOOD characters be allowed to move in and out of the underdark, use it as a trade/merchant/resource hub own property... conduct business... recruit allies... all openly and freely? Seems pretty preposterous to me, but why should we expand our expectations of one and not the other?

The underdark is admittedly not as extensive as the surface in terms of settlement options. Yes this is true. A lot of folk have written that they want SPACE on the surface to network and level up and have resources at their disposal. It 'sounds' to me like the argument is there isn't space on the surface for evil to breed and fester and grow. Folk above say this isn't what's being argued over. But it sounds like it to me.



I may have mis understood this whole argument, as my own bias towards good-aligned.. or lawful-neutral with good-leaning aligned characters dominates that personal bias, which affects my understanding and response, so my apologies if I'm missing the point.



I'd really like to know specific behaviors of evil characters that you cannot play. What specific expectations do you have that are getting suppressed? SPECIFIC please! My addled brain is rolling around trying to grasp all the generalizations that have been listed in previous pages. What's an evil character specific behavior that you want to RP that you can't?

Maybe identifying these more specifics might better help arrive at a solution to them.

[MoreThanThree]

I'd really like to know specific behaviors of evil characters that you cannot play. What specific expectations do you have that are getting suppressed? SPECIFIC please! My addled brain is rolling around trying to grasp all the generalizations that have been listed in previous pages. What's an evil character specific behavior that you want to RP that you can't?

Maybe identifying these more specifics might better help arrive at a solution to them.

Once again, evil is not suppressed. Edgy hostility is suppressed.

[Baseili]

To be specific I attempted a crime boss style character last year together with a friend, the goal was to create a crime syndicate that would span all the settlements and generally encourage some good old fashioned crime RP. However after two months of trying we finally gave up having gained only a single member.

The issues I saw were the following:

• Lack of interest in building a faction from scratch, most just wanted to burn through writs.
• Difficulty in finding and advertising for said faction as there is no real "seedy" areas in Cordor to attract those kinds of characters and the Clover being almost unheard of by newer players.
• Outright refusal to join unless the faction owned a quarter or guildhouse, a practical impossibility given the level and how hard it is to find a guildhouse, or any storage outside of the Clover vaults.
• Players didn't want to jepordise their leveling writs or access to city services by doing evil deeds.
• Very few criminal style characters.

[Sea Shanties]

Yeah Kriv I don't know, I'm just saying some writs in Sencliff or somewhere else that's more lawless and seedy would be nice. I don't feel like arguing that further with you. We're all just here to express opinions and I respect yours.

Another common fantasy trope Arelith could possibly use would be a thieves' guild that's powerful enough to operate somewhat in the open (as in, the leader has political pull and the headquarters are well known, like a Mafia crime boss.) I don't know how that could be pulled off but the seedy side of Cordor could have its own permanent thieves' guild and leader or something.

[Durvayas]

choosing to be the bad guy outside the underdark shouldn't be a punishment, it should be encouraged to make sure all possible roles are being played. We want bad guys to level as quickly as good guys and form just as large networks and have some victories some times and to do so they need some freedom to build up their strength and resources.

Is the above quote reversable? should choosing to play a GOOD GUY... INSIDE... the underdark not be a punshiment ALSO?

Should we open up the Undardark to allow GOOD characters to move about freely and not get rolf-stomped by the forces of Andunor JUST for being in Andunor? Should GOOD characters be allowed to move in and out of the underdark, use it as a trade/merchant/resource hub own property... conduct business... recruit allies... all openly and freely? Seems pretty preposterous to me, but why should we expand our expectations of one and not the other?

Are you trolling? You can already play good monsters(with a normal reward) and good surfacers (as spies or captured slaves) in the underdark. Yes, you have to be hidden about it. In the one settlement on the server out of how many? eight? its the one settlement on the server that caters exclusively to evil. This should be expected. Its basically mordor.
Yet... its also the most open settlement in the game. Anyone(who isn't an elf or dwarf) can come down and trade, and hire mercenaries. Andunor is an EVIL TRADE CITY, and there are many characters on the server who do exactly just that. They fraternize with the monsters...

...Until someone from the surface sees them, and outs them, of course. Then they get to experience the issues being discussed firsthand in this thread.

Its disingenuous of you to pretend that Andunor doesn't constantly have good aligned PCs sneaking about in it, yet you pretend like they aren't viable in the slightest. Hell, we kill at least three spies a week within the city limits on average. There is no shortage of goodies running around, being slaves, freeing slaves, feeding information to the surface, ambushing people outside the city, and sometimes in it.

And when the goodies in Andunor get caught, they get hunted, and do you know where they go?
They go back... back to the other seven settlements that will accept them. What a luxury! They can keep playing their characters! They have towns they can resupply in, that they fit in thematically, where they won't get PvPed by locals who don't want them there in the first place, where their faiths won't be suppressed, and where they might ever get a pat on the back as a hero for being a brave little spy.

If an evil character is booted from the surface, Andunor is not a refuge. The underdark does not WANT more surface PCs shunted into the underdark. We have too many surface race PCs in andunor as-is, with the massive outcast population chafing with the monsters. Andunor should not be the sole location on the island that houses evil that isn't explicitely a banite or pirate.

Neither the UD side of the community wants that, and obviously, neither do the people who would play evil on the surface if they actually had somewhere to go that was vaguely safe.

I may have mis understood this whole argument, as my own bias towards good-aligned.. or lawful-neutral with good-leaning aligned characters dominates that personal bias, which affects my understanding and response, so my apologies if I'm missing the point.

I'd really like to know specific behaviors of evil characters that you cannot play. What specific expectations do you have that are getting suppressed? SPECIFIC please! My addled brain is rolling around trying to grasp all the generalizations that have been listed in previous pages. What's an evil character specific behavior that you want to RP that you can't?

At least you are being honest about being biased.

But at this point, I'm convinced you are also being intentionally obtuse, given your use of the suppressed evidence fallacy and burden of proof fallacy.

No one is going to make a list of all the myriad character archetypes and behaviors that have been, are, and will be squashed as embers of evil as soon as they are detected just to satisfy your bias. I have no faith that any amount of detail given would be enough for you to see that this is a problem.

This entire thread is full of stories of people who tried to play evil, not mustache twirling evil, literally just mundane evil. From characters of certain faiths who haven't done anything save wear a medallion of bane, to not previously active closet warlocks, all with roughly the same result. Getting outed, PvPed and getting driven out, and you've either read none of it, or you're willfully discarding it.

[Marsi]

To be specific I attempted a crime boss style character last year together with a friend, the goal was to create a crime syndicate that would span all the settlements and generally encourage some good old fashioned crime RP. However after two months of trying we finally gave up having gained only a single member.

The issues I saw were the following:

• Lack of interest in building a faction from scratch, most just wanted to burn through writs.
• Difficulty in finding and advertising for said faction as there is no real "seedy" areas in Cordor to attract those kinds of characters and the Clover being almost unheard of by newer players.
• Outright refusal to join unless the faction owned a quarter or guildhouse, a practical impossibility given the level and how hard it is to find a guildhouse, or any storage outside of the Clover vaults.
• Players didn't want to jepordise their leveling writs or access to city services by doing evil deeds.
• Very few criminal style characters.

Not all factions find success, with thieves guilds being perhaps the most attempted and most given up on. An isle-wide syndicate is an enormous undertaking and I don't think it's fair to suggest Arelith is an action server or make generalizations about the player base because you were unable to accomplish that goal. In the free creative market of the server you have to compete for attention with other players, but if you, in your words, had trouble competing with the plain mechanics of the server, that says more to me about your ability in drumming up attention than the value system of the players.

I don't think you're completely wrong in all your observations -- there is absolutely a bias for some towards established, guild-house owning and "thematically secure" factions like Banites or the settlements over newly minted organizations. But some of your other assertions don't hold for me for the fact that a powerful crime syndicate found success in the Fool's Clover -- powerful enough to uniquely influence Cordorian politics in all the right gangster movie-ish ways -- only a year before your attempt. So it can absolutely be done.

[Richørd]

This entire thread is a good meme. *okay sign*

Seriously though, you can be evil on the surface. Just don't make it blatantly obvious. Done.